Does TV Show a Picture of Real Christianity?

Lisa SpencerLeave a comment

Dr. Russell Moore critiques Pat Robertson’s latest televised symptoms of his apparent Foot in Mouth disease here. In a nutshell, Robertson made some crazy statements directed to a female caller of multi-ethnic adopted children who was lamenting that she could not find a man who was willing to marry her.  Telling the female caller that no man wants to “marry the United Nations” or that “adopted kids might grow up weird”, is not only dumb and insensitive but contradicts the message of the gospel of hope and redemption. Moore makes some really good points that are worth reading. He also blames Robertson’s foundation of the prosperity gospel as the culprit for a worldview that disdains anything that doesn’t fit within a picture of success. I particularly liked what he said about real Christianity that cannot be found on TV

I say to my non-Christian friends and neighbors, if you want to see the gospel of Christ, the gospel that has energized this church for two thousand years, turn off the television. The grinning cartoon characters who claim to speak for Christ don’t speak for him. Find the followers who do what Jesus did. Find the people who risk their lives to carry a beaten stranger to safety. Find the houses opened to unwed mothers and their babies in crisis. Find the men who are man enough to be a father to troubled children of multiple ethnicity and backgrounds.

And find a Sunday School class filled with children with Down Syndrome and cerebral palsy and fetal alcohol syndrome. Find a place where no one considers them “weird” or “defective,” but where they joyfully sing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.”

That might not have the polish of television talk-show theme music, but that’s the sound of bloody cross gospel.

I confess I don’t watch what passes for Christian TV. The rare times I do make me feel like I’ve turned on some kind of magic show advertised on QVC with the peddling of prayer cloths and miracles for the right “seed” amount. If you don’t have that, you can just speak something into existence. It’s only a matter of minutes before I change the channel.

But it does make me wonder, is there any legitimate representation of Christianity on TV?

Sanctification is a Gospel-Centered Waltz…

Lisa SpencerLeave a comment

Not a Try Harder Two-Step. Yet, that is an easy pit to fall into. I think this mainly happens when we see the gospel as a requirement for conversion but not for sanctification. So what happens is we embrace the message of salvation and receive God’s free gift of grace. But then compliance kicks in. There is holiness to achieve, habits to break, transformation to accomplish. So we set goals, engage in disciplines, participate in activities. The comparison game only fuels the accomplishment seeking – the need to do more, try harder, achieve and look the part.  Success secures confidence but failure brings shame. Repeat cycle.

What a tiring way to live and not the abundant life that Christ came to give us. The gospel is not just for conversion but is the very foundation of Christian life. You are a Christian because of the irresistible call of a loving and gracious Father, who accepts us through belief in the Son and secures us through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. We are already sanctified (set-apart) and made holy upon conversion (Romans 6:3-6). Continue reading →

Can a Woman Teach a Man?

Lisa Spencer4 Comments

“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:11-12)

This is probably one of the most hotly debated and divisive passages in the Bible. Interpretations will varying depending upon how the relevancy of the cultural situation is factored in.  While I see a timeless principle at work there is also some cultural considerations that are being addressed. Moreover, we have to weigh what Paul is instructing Timothy with the complete witness of scripture.

In that regard I think some questions are in order.

  • What did “teach or exercise authority” mean in that setting?
  • Did Paul really mean for women to have no voice in the church? How does that fit with the distribution of gifts for the edification of the body of Christ?
  • Didn’t women prophesy in mixed settings? How does that translate to today, particularly related to a global perspective and organically developed ministry situations?
  • What cultural factors if any were influencing Paul’s instruction and how does that translate into contemporary situations?

As a complementarian, I affirm male headship and do believe there are restrictions. I have no issues with learning in silence or submitting to male headship. But I also consider how this is to play out with how the whole body of Christ is edified so that it grows itself up in love (Ephesians 4:16). I think it’s unfortunate when cultural factors are given due consideration in other passages, but seem to get dismissed here under the rubric “the bible clearly says”.  I honestly think there should be some tension here. It’s also unfortunate when any assertion by women for speaking is construed as self-serving, which is the chief reason I tend to stay away from the gender debate.

Well, I’ll be going back in that hole soon. But for what it’s worth, I’d thought I’d share a position paper I wrote out last summer for a required course I took on Acts and the Pauline epistles.

Position on Women and Bible Teaching

Patriarchy: The Third Option in the Comp/Egal Debate

Lisa Spencer8 Comments

I asked this question shortly after I got this blog started: is there a third option in the comp/egal debate. My reasoning was fairly simple. Much of what I see being labeled as complementarianism is not very complementary has produced strained, and in some cases manufactured role differentiation. After reading this rather perplexing article by D.A. Carson, What’s Wrong With Patriarchy, I’ve been ruminating on the topic and have come to the conclusion that the third option has been there all along: patriarchy.

Now, I have the utmost respect for the Don, as he is affectionately termed among my theological discoursers. You’d be hard pressed to find better scholarship in New Testament studies. But this article left me a bit perplexed and confused, especially this statement here

In a similar vein, while “patriarchalism” may refer, rather neutrally, to a social order in which fathers rule, the mental associations connected with the term may be hugely variable. For some, it may conjure up order, stability, and fathers of the “Father Knows Best” variety. When one examines family breakdown in many of our communities, with fathers known rather more for their absence than for anything else, a little “patriarchalism” may have its attractions. On the other hand, for many others “patriarchalism” conjures up macho condescension toward women, self-promoting arrogance at the expense of “the little woman,” and even (God help us) terrifying sexual abuse. Why would any Christian organization want to defend such grotesque distortions of what God has ordained? Similarly, “traditionalism” in male/female relationships calls to mind, for some older Americans, the stable families of the Eisenhower years (even while all sides acknowledge that the white picket fences sometimes enclosed more unseemly realities), but for many others “traditionalism” is associated with nothing more than preserving the status quo. If one associates that status quo with a refusal to overcome manifold injustice, then traditionalism itself is evil.

So John Piper and others coined the expression complementarianism. One of its virtues was its newness: it did not (yet!) have a history of wretched connotations. Denotationally it encapsulated what many of us were trying to say. The Bible does not present men and women as if they are interchangeable in every respect, save for the fact that only the woman has a uterus and can therefore produce babies. Rather, both men and women were made in the image of God and are of equal worth before him, but in God’s good design they fit together in mutually complementary ways that go way beyond mere sexual mechanics. The substance of this complementarianism has to be filled out by careful and reverent study of Scripture, study that is as suspicious of agenda-driven traditionalism as it is of agenda-driven egalitarianism. Continue reading →

Grief is not a Four-Letter Word

Lisa SpencerLeave a comment

One of my profs posted this blog post on Facebook yesterday from a young lady that is grieving. No, she did not lose a loved one as that is typically what we associate with grief. But she is experiencing a loss of a dream, a desire, something that will make her whole. She wants a baby but for whatever reason, it’s just not happening.

Now for some of us, that doesn’t mean too much. It doesn’t touch me at all. My kids are 23 and 14 (almost 15) and that shop, along with any further desires have long been closed up. But for the person experiencing that loss, it is a hard thing to take regardless of whether we understand it or not.

For some odd reason, I find there to be a general expectation that grief should not touch the Christian. Or if it does, it is only for “qualified” reasons and should have a very short shelf life. I find that typically we treat grief like a four letter word – something that needs correcting that we really shouldn’t say. We’ll tell that grieving person that it’s their problem, their attitude needs adjusting or worse, that they are not devoted to Jesus enough. Not only is that insensitive to the grieving person, but it completely negates why the grief is experienced. Continue reading →